While Brees does not approve of anything Williams said, the veteran quarterback did say that locker room talk can't always be taken literally.

"There's a lot of things that come out of people's mouths in the locker room, and on game day and in the heat of the moment. This year, even as I watched games, I heard plenty of stuff -- let's go knock these dudes out, let's go do this, do that. If you take it for face value and take it out of context, there'd be a lot of fines and suspensions getting thrown out.

"My point is, you've got to be able to separate rhetoric from intent. Can you measure intent? Can you say the New Orleans Saints or anybody else went out with the intent to seriously hurt somebody? No, I don't think you can. You can take an audio tape, you can take a microphone off the field and read into it all you want. But there's certain things about this game -- I don't know if you're ever going to eliminate guys talking crazy when they're all hyped up, ready to go hit somebody."

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"I wouldn't back off of that because I know that that's true," Brees said. "I know that there are a lot of guys that look at some of the things the commissioner has done, the way that he's acted, and what seems to be at times maybe a knee-jerk reaction or perhaps maybe his intentions were a little different than what is kind of claimed to be. That's something that obviously we hope can change. We hope can get better.

"But I think the way the bounty allegations were handled, I thought was horrendous."

Goodell should find a way to make peace with Brees or eliminate some of his concerns. It can't be good public relations for the shield when one of the NFL's best-known good guys continually rips the commish in public.